The Little Doctor (17 page)

Even then it had been nothing new to her. She must have realized it long ago, deep in the secret places of her heart, without being able to acknowledge it. Nothing she could do now would change it. Nothing anyone could do. She was sorry about Nicholas—sorry about the disappointment and frust
r
ation he would feel—but she could not marry him without loving him.

Loving Max had taught her that. She was already married to him in her heart. He would never know, of course. She would make sure of that, too. She would go away, find another job, try to forget.

To forget? Perhaps not, but she could smother her hurt in work—possibly abroad or back in her own native Scotland. There were so many ways of putting distance between herself and Max. So many bitter ways.

She had to do it. Now that she knew, she had to do it.

“We’ll be back just as soon as ever we can,” Mary Elgg
p
romised, looking down at the unconscious figure the two guides
h
ad eased gently from the stretcher so that they could continue their search with it strapped firmly to Duri’s back. “It shouldn’t take us very long, especially when there’s a fresh trail to follow. The snow has kept off, thank goodness!”

When they had gone, Jane sat for a long time by Max’s side, just looking at him, her fingers clasped loosely about his wrist. The pulse-beat was slow
and
steady now, the swift, painful breathing greatly relieved. Within an hour or two he would open his eyes
and
look at her.

“
One hour
,”
she thought, remembering something she had read so long ago that it seemed to belong to another lifetime.
“
One hour, out of all the years
.”

The minutes slid away. She acknowledged their passing reluctantly. In the hut the sound of the wind was scarcely audible now, and when the snow began to fall, the stillness outside could almost be felt. She watched the flakes slanting down across the tiny square of glass until they seemed to tumble against each other in their eagerness to reach the earth.

In the first pale, false dawn Max opened his eyes. He did not look surprised to see her sitting there, and it was several minutes before he spoke.

“Can you tell me what happened, Jane?” he asked.

“I
n a minute.”

Automatically she was checking up, taking his pulse again, making completely sure that her former diagnosis was correct.

“There was an avalanche—quite a small one,” she explained, at last. “Stephen Elgg said you saw it coming and jumped. They managed to avoid it.”

“I remember the thing coming down.” He put an exploratory hand to his head. “What’s the damage?” he asked.

“Not so very much,” Jane assured him. “There was a certain amount of concussion and you’ve been unconscious for over an hour.”

“But you think I’ll live?” He smiled crookedly at the joke they had shared so many times in those far-off student days. Then, his brows drawn darkly, he said. “I suppose Elgg and the guides have gone on over the pass?”

“Yes. Mrs. Elgg went with them.” Jane gazed down at her clasped hands. “She thought she might be able to help with Valerie if anything had happened.”

She had given words to the fear that must have been dominating his own thoughts ever since consciousness had returned, and once again she saw his brow darken.

“This is a desperate situation for me, Jane,” he confessed, easing himself on to his elbow with a tremendous effort of will. “I can’t just lie here—”

Firmly she pressed him on to the improvised bed the guides had made for him.

“You can do nothing, Max. Not just now,” she implored. “The Elggs and the two guides are experienced people. If Valerie and Jakes are within reach they will be found. Please try to accept that. You’re not fit to go.”

He sank back, covering his eyes with an unsteady hand.

“How easily one can fail!” he muttered. “I thought I could shield her from every harm.”

Jane sat very still.

“You did your best,” she said, aware that her voice had been suddenly stiff. “No one can foresee an accident.”

“I should have foreseen this,” he accused himself. “It was the sort of thing I should have expected Valerie to do. I should have taken you into my confidence long ago.”

“You mean—the letter?” Jane asked, feeling as if an icy hand had suddenly gripped her by the throat. “I have it back at the hotel.”

“It’s not much use, here or at the hotel,” he said. “It was an emergency measure.” Suddenly he was looking straight at her. “Jane, Valerie is incurably ill.”

He spoke the name, Parkinson’s disease, and the fatal words dropped into a terrible silence. Jane felt the icy grip at her throat tightening until it seemed that her brain would no longer function, even to grapple with the significance of what she had just heard. A dark and widening void seemed to be gaping in front of her in which she and Max and Valerie were doomed to wander forever.

“It can’t be true!” she heard herself saying, at last. “There must be some mistake—some way out.”

Max continued to look at her steadily as he said: “You know there’s no way out, Jane.”

Yes, she knew—now when realization came flooding in she knew what Max had done. He had married Valerie to protect her, to shield her from this awful thing. When her father had died, leaving Valerie alone in the world, Max had known about this insidious disease which would take its toll ruthlessly and steadily as the years went on. He must have recognized the first symptoms and decided what he had to do. For so long he had owed so much to Sir Francis that it must have seemed the natural step for him to take, quite apart from loving Valerie.

And all this time he had been living with the knowledge of death close beside him. Valerie could live for years, since her affliction had
q
uite obviously taken the chronic form. Only very gradually woul
d
helplessness set in. But already the signs were there. They had been there all the time for any medical practitioner to see, Jane realized—the headaches, the odd, lurching movements that had caused that first fall on the staircase at Marton Heights. It was so evident now. The reason for Max’s anxiety and his many restrictions; why he had wanted that treacherous stairway adequately railed off and why, above all, he had sought to protect his wife from her own waywardness.

There were other things to remember, too, small pointers to the truth that Jane had perhaps been too deeply involved to recognize, such as the scene in the bedroom when Valerie’s slurred speech had been smothered in the pillows and Valerie herself had been conscious of something amiss.

Not that Jane thought she would know the whole truth. Max would have shielded her from that, too. The disease was still in its very earliest stage.

“
I should have guessed,” she said unsteadily. “I should have seen it—”

“It’s too soon to detect it easily unless you were living close to Val,” Max answered heavily. “Or unless she decided to confide in you. She doesn’t know the true state of affairs, of course. She’s only conscious of the dizzy spells and the slight attacks. Subconsciously I think she realizes that there’s something not quite right, but she’s sure it will clear up in time.”

Jane was remembering Valerie’s almost desperate desire to live life to the full; her own heart contracted with pity and helplessness. There was nothing they could do; nothing that medical science had yet been able to devise that would give Valerie back the full, adventurous life she longed for once this slow, insidious killer had taken complete hold.

Suddenly Jane was on her feet, staring out of the window.

“It’s too cruel!” she cried involuntarily. “Too terribly cruel!”

“Yes,” Max said quietly, “that was my first reaction, too.”

They both knew that Valerie had years to live, years of a creeping paralysis which she would not be able to understand, and somehow Jane felt that Max’s wife would rebel violently against her sentence. Max would have that to cope with, too.

In the deep silence she looked out toward the mountains where the snow was falling like a thin shroud. Snow on snow; snow covering up even the fresh tracks of the day before; snow heavy on the bare branches of the larch; snow cushioning the low rail of the verandah in front of the tiny hut where she and Max were momentarily imprisoned. It was all so still and silent and white.

“I wish you had told me,” she said, turning back to the fire. “Perhaps I should have done.”

S
uddenly he looked defeated and tired. “At least before you came out here with Val. I had no right to inflict this on you, Jane, without telling you the truth.”

He had told her now, so why had he kept the truth hidden for so
long? It was all in the letter, she realized, in case of just such an emergency as they were facing now, and Professor Zooltan in Zurich was the authority whom Max had wished to be called in. It was easy enough now to piece things together once she knew the truth. The only confusing thing was why Max had not confided in her before this. She would have respected his confidence and she would have understood so many things that had hurt and puzzled her.

Slowly she walked back to the window, looking out. A flurry of snow fell from the eaves of the hut, but the main fall was lessening. Already the sky was clearer, and with the strengthening light the cloud thinned perceptibly, leaving a high, clear world of virgin snow stretching as far as she could see.

Gradually the distant peaks took shape, so ethereal in their delicate early-morning loveliness, so suffused with hazy light that even in that moment of anxiety Jane had to stand
and
stare. All about her nature seemed to be taking her winter rest in undisturbed repose. No breath of wind or note of bird broke the universal silence; no human footprint marred the pristine beauty of the newly-fallen snow.

Almost without movement Max was by her side. He stood with one hand for support against the pine panelling, his eyes taking in the peace of this high world of snowclad giants where trivialities of life seemed to have no place.

He did not speak, but somehow, for Jane, the years rolled back and once again they were walking hand-in-hand among mountains such as these, back in their native Scotland with all their lives still before them.

It was Max who saw the returning search party first.

“They’re coming back,” he said. “Obviously they’ve found nothing.”

Stephen Elgg was leading the little group of skiers. They had searched all night and were returning defeated. The falling snow had hampered them and they looked tired and vaguely dispirited. Max groped his way to the door to open it, while Jane bent to stir the pine logs under the kettle she had kept on the point of the boil all through the night.

The small party filled the hut, stamping the snow from their boots and blowing on their hands as the guides flung ropes and equipment into the corners. For a second or two no one spoke. Then Mary Elgg said:

“It was pretty hopeless as soon as the snow began to fall. Their tracks went all over the place, but I understand Jakes knows the district well. He wouldn’t do anything foolish. We calculated that they took the general direction of t
h
e Hochwang and they may have gone all the way down to Chur. It’s a long run for an inexperienced skier, but I gather your wife isn’t entirely a novice, Doctor?”

“No,” Max said, his lips tightly compressed. “It would be more a question of staying-power, I’m afraid. The conditions looked bad.”

“If they got to Chur before the snow began they would be all right,” Stephen said in a clipped tone that made his unspoken thoughts only too clear.

If Valerie and Jakes had reached Chur, he meant, why hadn’t they sent a message back to the hotel?

“
Better have something to eat,” Max advised, turning abruptly toward the fire. “I’m more than sorry about all this, bringing you up here on what might easily prove to be a wild goose chase.”

“You didn’t know that, of course,” Stephen said, regretting his brusqueness. “But we haven’t found anything. Quite often one comes on a broken ski or an abandoned pack, but there was nothing.”

They gathered round the fire.

“How
’
s the head?” Mary enquired. “Painful, I expect?”

“It will mend,” he said, although his pallor made Jane insist that he should sit down again.

The two guides had flung themselves on the floor with their backs against the wall. They were still alert and smiling in spite of their strenuous night, and they accepted the mugs of steaming coffee Jane hande
d
to them with simple gratitude.

“It is good to feel the warmth again,” Hans said, while Duri cupped his cold fingers around the mug without comment.

They would not sit too close to the fire because they knew that they would have to go out again. The search must go on.

“
Now that we have the light in our favor we will be able to go a lot faster,” Stephen reflected, making faint circles with a pencil on the map he had unfolded. “We’ll try here—and here first. Both are tricky places, but after that we can follow the river down. It would be the most likely descent if they did cross the pass—”

“Hold your horses!” Mary had been standing beside the window looking out, and now she was halfway to the door. “There’s someone coming.”

Jane was nearest the door, and when it was opened she could see the lone skier approaching rapidly across the snow. He came from the opposite direction of the pass, from the way they had come up the evening before, and he wore the gray vorlages and scarlet sweater of a guide.

They waited for him in an odd, grim little silence, aware that he was the bearer of news.

When he mounted the rough steps to the verandah he was breathless. He had travelled swiftly and without rest.

“There is no longer any need to search,” he informed them. “They are found. This morning a telephone call came through from St. Moritz.”

The brief message fell into a silence suddenly tense. Jane dared not look round at Max. All she could see was Mary Elgg’s open-mouth stare of disgust and resentment.

“St. Moritz?” Mary, as always, was the first to put her thoughts into actual words. “
But how the devil did they get there? They couldn’t have
skied
all the way.”

“
Does it matter?” Stephen said, glancing at Max. “We know they’re safe.”

“
Safe! I should say they are! High and dry in St. Moritz on Christmas Eve, no less!” Mary found it impossible to curb her tongue in the circumstances. “They could, of course, have let us know earlier, but perhaps that just didn’t occur to Mr. Jakes.”

“
He didn’t think anyone would search,” the young guide explained. “The conditions were not bad when they left the main party, and they got to Chur before the snow began. Mr. Jakes has a good reputation in the district. He is a competent skier.”

“And a damned arrogant one, if you ask me!” Mary exploded. “I suppose he didn’t expect anyone to search for
him.
He’d take it as an insult, I suppose. But when people intend to go off into the blue like that, or change their minds on a long run, they ought to remember about the telephone system!”

Max made an oddly defeated sort of movement from the couch. “I’m sorry about all this, Mrs. Elgg,” he apologized. “It’s not enough to say, of course—”

“Oh, don’t worry about that!” Mary was taken aback, because she obviously liked Max. “You’ve had the brunt of it, but I still think Jakes ought to be horsewhipped. He’s the type who causes all sorts of trouble out here. Well,
”
she added when no one else seemed inclined to speak, “we’d better get you down to the hotel. It’s just a pity this had to happen to you.
”

“
I
shall be all right,” he said.